Survivor Ballads: Three Films by Shohei Imamura

While Akira Kurosawa may be the only Japanese director with much name recognition in the U.S., Shoehei Imamura earned his share of international praise by winning the Palme d'Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival with The Ballad of Narayama, an earthy slice-of-life period piece that detailed the lives of villagers eking out a meager physical and spiritual existence in an isolated mountain valley.   

But Imamura was no one trick pony.  After working under the Japanese studio system throughout the '50 and '60s, he staged a comeback in the '80s with more creative control that produced a string of notable films, including another Palme d'Or winner, The Eel, in 1997. While the latter isn't part of Arrow Video's new Blu-ray box set, Survivor Ballads:  Three Films by Shohei Imamura, it still delivers a trio of charming, poetic, insightful, funny and sobering stories set against a wide background of Japan's complicated cultural history.

 

The Ballad of Narayma (1983) follows the daily struggles of Tatsuhei and his extended family, who, like their neighbors, live on the edge of starvation.  But for a life short and hard, it's also wonderfully rich and complex.  Imamura's film shows that there more to existence than just survival, that death is just as often natural and beautiful as it is dark and tragic, that love and sex are pleasant ports in a storm, and the true joys in life come when you least expect them.

 

Zegen (1987) undoubtedly grew out of Imamura's documentary Karayuki-san, the Making of the Prostitute, released just the year before.  But it's a much looser and satirical take on the sex trafficking business that spread across the South Pacific in the early 1900's with the opening of Japan and the rise of fervent nationalism that led to WWII.   Here we meet Iheiji Muraoka, a Japanese immigrant who swims into Hong Kong and eventually becomes a wildly successful brothel owner...all in the name of serving the Emperor.  

 

How Muraoka convinces himself that his actions are in the best interest of Japan is part of the film's appeal.  And Imamura doesn't shy away from the more comical and ridiculous aspects of his character's accidental success.  Zegen(which translates a "pimp" in Japanese) is made with such a light touch that the humor never feels like it's in bad taste.  And by the time Muraoka's dream of worldwide Japanese domination becomes a real possibility, the audience finally realizes his ideology wasn't so ridiculous after all.

 

Even though it has the most modern setting of the three films, Black Rain (1989) is the most traditional in execution, restaging the apocalyptic A-bomb attack on Hiroshima and following a family five years later who are - quite literally - still dealing with the fallout.  Those who escaped the "flash" have settled into a frightening existence as they wait for symptoms of radioactive poisoning to appear, claiming the lives of the old and ruining the chance of a future for the young.  

 

Imamura's film is an excellent companion piece to director Hideo Sekigawa's Hiroshima (1953), which covers much of the same ground.  But Black Rain is more personal and less political, saving the real tragedy for those who live with the knowledge that their death was preordained five years earlier.  "Better an unjust peace than a just war," pronounces one of the survivors.  It's a life affirming statement that covers all of Imamura's films collected here which celebrate the small victory of seeing the sunrise every morning versus the Red Sun eclipsing it all.

 

Arrow's set is flat-out fantastic and includes brand new audio commentaries on all three films by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp, video appreciations, alternate color ending for Black Rain, archival interviews, trailers, press kits and a 60-page collector's booklet.

 

 

 

 

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